Making your website accessible and easy to navigate can be the difference between retaining visitors and losing them to other sites. Strong, well-designed cornerstone content is a major factor in keeping traffic on your site and improving your customer experience. This content can also help you improve your SEO, which will boost your place in search results and bring more viewers to your site. If you don’t already have well-written and designed cornerstone content, start today so you don’t miss out on the benefits it can bring to your business. [Read more…]

When websites and blogs struggle to generate value from the content they publish, it can be difficult to identify the reasons. However, just as any good doctor does when a patient exhibits symptoms of being unhealthy, it’s essential for you to study the signs and identify the root causes of your shortcomings. [Read more…]

As a blogger, when you sit down to write a post, you have two primary objectives:

Present the dilemma you’re going to solve and give a top-down view of the big picture.

Flesh out the details and give specifics in form of answers to the dilemma and the big picture.

In most blog posts, these are the two main steps that need to be focused on. By way of your article’s title and introductory paragraph you need to set forth a foundation, by presenting a problem or a question and then laying it out so that your readers understand exactly the issue your post is going to address. [Read more…]

Many marketers start blogs for their company as a way to promote their products or services through another medium. However, as the recent Google updates and overall best practices for search engine optimization and content marketing go, it is best to focus on providing blog posts that are useful and cover industry news instead of trying to sell more products.

Throughout the years, internet users have become smarter and better about finding the information they need and are interested in. Because of this, they are not willing to waste their time looking at overly promotional copy that isn’t teaching them something new or catering to their interests. Because of this, it is time for bloggers to step up their game and start providing great content. Once a website begins to get recognized as a leader in their industry for providing great information through their blog posts, they will start getting more leads and traffic.

We all have it. The email inbox reaches 1,000 unread messages like some virtual red flashing light indicator of procrastination. You’ve got 600 tweets to read and 45 DMs to respond to. Your WordPress blog is still version 2.5 and your WordPress Theme only works with WordPress 2.1. The To Do pile on your desk resembles the Leaning Tower of Pisa. You’ve got Netflix movies stacked upon Blockbuster videos past due to return. And your blog is begging for a blog post.

As mentioned in the last article in Nothing to Blog About, not every idea is worth publishing. Not every blog post is publishable. Not every blog post should see the light of the public eye. And sometimes that type of blog post is stopping us from producing blog content.

I can’t tell you the many hours I’ve spent struggling over a blog post, determined it had value and needed to be published. I’d beat at it, thrash it, rip and tear it apart, only to decide it wasn’t ready, nor was I, to have this ever be published.

Has this happened to you? A blog post you want to publish sits in your drafts or stares at you from your blog screen screaming, “NO! NOT YET!”

If people judged me by the number of ideas I generated in single day on the subject of WordPress and blogging, I’d be the Einstein of the blogosphere. If they took a peek into the all the various files, folders, virtual and physical, I have to store all of those ideas, they’d pack me up and send me to the mental institution.

I come up with ideas for things to blog about constantly, rarely running out of ideas. The problem is that few of these see the light of day, or I get so caught up in the ideas, I can’t get past the idea to the Publish button.

As part of this series called Nothing to Blog About, we’re talking about how to stir up your mental pot when the bloggy brain bogs down and content cannot be found. From among the various options suggested already, I’d like to resurrect the traditional idea file. [Read more…]

In the last article in this new series called Nothing to Blog About, I asked you to go back to your roots, in a sense, to start over and find that “lovin’ feeling” you’ve lost about your blog subject matter to re-energize your creative blogging spirit.

What happens if you can’t find it? What happens if you’ve really lost that lovin’ feeling? [Read more…]

In this new series called Nothing to Blog About, we’re looking at the various ways your blogging creativity can be temporarily dried up and plugged up, and how to break the dam. Today, my recommendation is to go back to your roots.

Go Back to the Beginning

I know all there is to know about blogging, right? I’ve been doing this longer than most people, in fact, before some tweeters and bloggers were even born (that’s a scary thought!). I’ve been through all the various blog struggles and hoops there are to blog through. I’ve survived all the names changes from website to online journal to weblog to blogging to microblogging and the belief that social media is a new concept. I’ve had my content stolen, been accused of stealing other people’s content, abused by trolls and comment spammers, survived changes in web technology and many upgrades, and lived to blog on another day. So I’ve been there, done it all, haven’t I?

Have I? What I’ve done is forgotten what is was like to start blogging. To be the new kid on the bloggy block. [Read more…]

I’ve been at this blogging thing since before 1994 and faced many a time staring at my computer with dread. Not again. Honestly. Ain’t nothing left to say. It’s all been said before. And I said it. Tank’s empty. It’s boring. I’m bored.

A blog calls to you, begs you to feed it. Your readers want your words, and the need must be fed. What do you do when you can’t think of anything of value to add other than what you ate for lunch?

A couple years ago, when blogging was still in its infancy, a post title like this was fairly common, along with titles such as: [Read more…]